BFI Flare Review: Girlhood (Bande de filles)

Girlhood, one of our highlights from the last edition of the BFI Flare film festival is a refershing and thought-provoking coming-of-age story. Set in the black, working-class outskirts of Paris, it tells about the emotional growth of Marieme, a strong girl in a fragile situation.

Oppressed by both her abusive brother and an unfair society, Marieme finally gets a taste of freedom when she joins a gang of free-spirited teenage girls. They steal, they smoke, they drink. They fight other gangs, gossip, dance, and feel alive. Queens of an unforgiving environment in a quest for freedom and independence.

Rather than judging the characters' actions, or focusing on their social disadvantage, Céline Sciamma offers a bittersweet and energetic celebration of the beauty of friendship among young women, in spite of difficulties, taboos and social pressure.

"The characters themselves sparked the project. The teenage girls that I would regularly
see hanging out in the vicinity of Paris’ Les Halles shopping center, or in the metro,
sometimes in Gare du Nord train station: always in a gang, loud, lively, dancing." (Céline Sciamma)